The practice of quarantine has changed over the centuries. However, the concept of protecting public health by restricting the movement of those who may have serious illnesses remains unchanged.
Although being in quarantine is usually unpleasant, all that remains is to console yourself that it was worse before. History knows a lot of interesting facts related to quarantine, after which modern measures may seem like the most tender concern for the population.
10. Quarantine and Hippocrates
The idea of isolating the sick is very old. Hippocrates (460-370 BC), known as the father of modern medicine, discussed the concept of quarantine in his three-volume work on epidemics.
This is especially interesting when you consider that even in the time of Hippocrates, there was a theory that the disease spreads from miasms. Doctors believed that miasms were bad air coming from rotting organic matter in the ground.
9. Etymology of the word "quarantine"
The word "quarantine" was first used in the 1660s and describes "a period when a ship suspected of carrying a disease is isolated." Quarantine is not an invented, but a borrowed word that arose from the Italian term quaranta giorni, which literally means “forty days”.
8. Quarantine has a flag
The black and yellow flag, also called "Yellow Jack", is the international quarantine signal.
Such a flag was flown on a ship that arrived at the port with many sick people on board. So local authorities could learn about the outbreak and take the necessary measures immediately.
After local authorities determined that the ship's health problems had been resolved and the quarantine ban was lifted, an all-yellow flag was flown on the ship.
7. Quarantine as a policy
Quaranta giorni is a Venetian policy first enacted in 1377 to protect Venice from one of the worst pandemics in human history.
The Adriatic port city of Ragusa (present-day Dubrovnik) was the first to pass a law requiring all arriving ships and merchant caravans to be quarantined for infection.
Initially, the Grand Council of Venice decreed that travelers from plague-infected areas should remain in isolation for 30 days. This period was later extended to 40 days. On the 41st day, a medical commission boarded the vessel, which decided whether the ship could go to the harbor.
Some historians consider the Ragusa quarantine decree one of the highest achievements of medieval medicine. By ordering the isolation of healthy sailors and traders for 30 days, Venetian officials showed remarkable understanding of the incubation period. The new arrivals may not have had symptoms of the plague, but they were isolated long enough to determine if they were really not sick.
In 1403, Venice established the world's first naval quarantine station, or lazaretto, on the island of the church of Santa Maria di Nazareth. The name "lazaretto" was in honor of the beggar Lazarus, the patron saint of lepers in Catholicism. Later, all quarantine hospitals founded by Venetians in Europe began to be called "infirmaries".
6. The importance of 40-day quarantine
Venice officials may have ordered a 40-day quarantine because this number was of great symbolic and religious significance to medieval Christians. When God made the Flood, it rained for 40 days and 40 nights, and Jesus fasted in the desert for 40 days.
Even before the onset of the plague, the biblical concept of a 40-day period of cleansing was adopted in public health practice. For example, after giving birth, the mother had to rest for 40 days.
5. The basic principles of quarantine are listed in the Bible
Leviticus provides guidance on how to deal with "unclean" or lepers. Anyone who developed white ulcers on the skin had to immediately contact the priest, who isolated the patient for seven days.
- "On the seventh day, the priest will examine him, and if the ulcer remains in its form and the ulcer does not spread over the skin, then the priest must confine him for another seven days."
- "On the seventh day, the priest will examine him again, and if the ulcer is less noticeable and the ulcer has not spread over the skin, then the priest must declare him clean: these are lichens, and let him wash his clothes and be clean."
- "If the lichens begin to spread over the skin, after he came to the priest for cleansing, then he must again appear to the priest."
- "The priest, seeing that the lichens are spreading on the skin, will declare him unclean: it is leprosy." - Leviticus 13: 5-8
People declared "unclean" were ordered to live separately, their dwelling was to be outside the camp.
4. The Apollo 11 astronauts were in quarantine so that the "lunar embryos" did not get to Earth
The triumphant return of the Apollo 11 mission also posed a serious threat. The NASA space agency could not be sure that dust particles or potential microorganisms from the Moon would be safe for earthlings.
It goes without saying that the accidental release of the lunar plague could wipe out all the good publicity generated by the Americans landing on the moon. Just in case, NASA decided to establish a three-week quarantine for the Apollo 11 crew.
However, during this time, they did not idle, but wrote reports, took interviews and underwent regular medical examinations. However, no "lunar embryos" were found in the astronauts, and on the evening of August 10, 1969, they were sent home. But the samples of the lunar soil had to remain in quarantine for much longer - for a period of 50 to 80 days.
3. "Typhoid Mary" and her life-long quarantine
Perhaps the most famous example of quarantine in American history, which pits human civil liberties against public protection, is the story of Mary Mallon, better known as "Typhoid Mary."
The first asymptomatic carrier of typhoid fever in the United States, she never felt sick, but nevertheless spread the disease to wealthy families in which she worked as a cook.
Officials quarantined Mary on North Brother Island in New York. Released three years later, she promised under oath not to cook for anyone else. However, Mary broke her vow and continued to spread the disease, so she was returned to North Brother, where the woman remained isolated for the rest of her life. At the same time, "Typhoid Mary" was a local celebrity, and even gave interviews to journalists. But none of them accepted even a glass of water from her hands.
2. Quarantine is for the poor, and the rich can stay at home
In 1916, when a polio epidemic hit New Yorkers, authorities began forcibly separating children from their parents and quarantining them.
However, wealthy parents could keep their sick children at home if they could provide them with a separate room and medical care.By November, the epidemic had passed, but not before more than 2,300 people died, mostly young people.
1. Quarantine for girls of easy virtue
Another interesting fact about quarantine is associated with the period of the First World War. At this time, the American authorities have quarantined (or simply imprisoned) more than 30,000 prostitutes in an attempt to curb the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Historian Allan Brandt called the effort "the most concerted attack on civil liberties in the name of public health in American history."
Paid love priestesses were allowed to leave quarantine once it was confirmed that they no longer had an STD.